The Poor People’s Campaign was a march on Washington D.C. to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States that began on this day in 1968, just one month after the assassination of one of its key organizers, MLK Jr.

The protest was also organized by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of King’s assassination.

After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3,000-person protest camp on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks in the spring of 1968.

Among those demands was a proposal for an “economic bill of rights” that included a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income measure, and more low-income housing for poor Americans of all races.

"I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…

When we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…

That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…"

-MLK Jr., in a 1967 planning meeting

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  • Comrade_Mushroom [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    Been learning Japanese, and I have reached the early point where I can read all characters of Hiragana and Katakana. So, I’m gonna do what I did when I was solidifying my reading skills in English as a kid - play Pokemon Red, but in Japanese! The intent is that it will get me a little further than just slowly reading out loud each individual character, towards recognizing many words immediately.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      My favorite co-worker is back from maternity leave and she’s Japanese and were back on her teaching me some Japanese and her teaching me some French. She’s mostly helping me with song lyrics so we can sing the cruel angel thesis parodies that I’ve written about working as a line cook back into Japanese and also so we can sing the 1979 gundam opening theme together. We’ve figured out everyone’s at work NERVE equivalent. I’m Misato, she is Asuka as fuck. Obviously the chef is Gendo. Shinji is our sous chef ironically cause he’s 37 and normal as hell, he plays DnD with his friends om his off days and is well adjusted as hell for a cook (also cause his sous chef job doesn’t really grant him any authority, he just gets stuck with making up menu shit thst the chef doesn’t want to and that her and I don’t wanna hop on. I guess it’s not totally ironic cause his lack of assertion has landed him in this place where the two of us operate with almost full autonomy and handle most of the delegating, it’s a situation that works and seems fine by him too), our life saving dishwasher is Rei. That dude works soooo much harder than the rest of us

      Edit: I really want her help with the Zeta theme but I introduced her to gundam and we’re working our way through and talking about it at work so og first. She’s also a history dork so she picked up parallels pretty quick.